DIY: Monster Book of Monsters

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my husband and I had sort of a strange wedding. We were married on October 31st, so we took the Halloween theme and ran with it. Along with that, we also had a literary twist to our decorations- translating to lots and lots of books mixed in with creepy stuff (If you’re having trouble marrying the two themes, imagine a haunted library…).

To go along with both the book theme and our creepy Halloween aspect, my husband had the idea to use the Monster Book of Monsters from Harry Potter in place of a traditional card box. I loved the idea so I got to work!

What You’ll Need:

A box with a hinged lid- preferably book shaped

Fake fur- 1 or 2 yards depending on the size of your box

Brown fabric- I used scraps from some old curtains

Crayola Model Magic- or some other clay, but I think this stuff works best because it’s super lightweight

Acrylic paints- yellow, white, red, black

Gold Puffy Paint

Four flattened glass marbles- like the kind you put in decorative candle votives or fish tanks (You could also purchase glass eyes)

Glue gun and glue

A comb

What to Do:

First step is to prepare the box. Since my husband and I were making our Monster book into a card box, we had to cut a slit in the side for cards to fit through. If you’re just making a plain book box, you can skip that part.

Paint the edge of the box with a mixture of thick white and yellow paint. Run a comb through the paint to create lines. This will make the edge of the box look more like book pages (sorry you can’t see this part very well in the pictures).

Once this has dried, you can attach the fur. Since the monster book in Harry Potter had a raised area on the head for the eyes, you can roll up a wad of paper or cardboard and glued it to the top of the box, roughly in the center. This makes it so that the eyes are slightly elevated after the fur is attached. After that’s done, wrap the fur around the box, gluing it down with hot glue as you go. As you’re gluing, double check to make sure the box still opens smoothly. I accidentally glued my box together at one point and it was a pain getting it unstuck…

After the fur is on, it’s time to decorate! You can use clear glass pebbles to make the eyes by painting a black circle on the back of the glass, then fill in the rest of the back with yellow paint to create a glass eye effect. Once dry, these can be attached to the raised part on the top of the box.

The teeth, tongue, and tentacles are created used Crayola Model Magic. I have to say, I love this stuff! It’s easy to work with, holds paint well, and is super light weight and slightly flexible once dry. The tentacles can be made by rolling cones out of the clay, then attaching small balls to the cones, pressing them partially flat with a pencil eraser to create a suction cup look. The tongue is just a flattened piece, shaped to look like a book mark. These clay pieces should be allowed to dry overnight.

Once dry, paint with acrylic paint. I used a mixture of white and yellow for the tentacles and teeth and a mixture of black and red for the tongue and gums with added areas of black for texture. Allow these to dry fully and then attach using hot glue.

For the words on the front of the book, draw the words out first in pencil on the brown

fabric (to make sure you get the size and spacing you want). Paint over them with yellow paint. Once that is dry, trace out the letters in Puffy Paint to add depth. Once dry, cut out the words and attached to the top of your book with hot glue.

You have now finished your Monster Book of Monsters! Feel free to add other details- claws, more teeth, etc… I found some cool photo corners in the scrapbook section of Hobby Lobby that I used for added embellishment on the edge of the book cover. Have fun with it!